21 twentyone marcel notes

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NOTES 1. 1. Page 128. DUTCH PAINTING by R.H. WILENSKI. FABER AND FABER. First printed in MCMXXIX. 2. Page 103. Ways of Seeing by John Berger. BBC and Penguin Books. First printed in 1972.

3. Still Life Painting in the Baroque at: http://www.students.sbc.edu/albanis03/Stilllife.htm 4. Ibid 5. What is Art by Leo Tolstoy. Search on the web for What is Art by Leo Tolstoy or try: http://www.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/361r14.html ( See also further down at the end after Further Reading other remarks about ‘cultural habit). * 6. Page 95-96. DUTCH PAINTING by R.H. WILENSKI. FABER AND FABER. First printed in Mcmxxix.

7. Page 98. Ibid.

8. Page 112. Ways of Seeing by John Berger. BBC and Penguin Books. First printed in 1972.

9. Page 6. Breaking the Rules. The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937. Edited by Stephen Bury. THE British Library. 2007.

10. Ibid.

11. Along with photomontage there would also be the MERZ collage work of Kurt Schwitters in Hanover .He was not part of Berlin Dada or was invited to join this cabal but in many ways his art has provided one of the lingering cultural legacies of the Dada spirit.

12. Source lost but this quote attributed to Marcel Duchamp possibly in The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp by Arturo Schwarz. Delano Greenidge Editions New York. 2000.

13. Page 6. DADA AND SURREALISM by Dawn Ades. Thames and Hudson. 1974.

14. Page 43. Golding, John. Duchamp The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even Art in Context. Edited by John Fleming and Hugh Honour. Allen Lane The Penguin Press. 1973.

15. Mary Adam Review of This is Modern Art by Matthew Collings.mht at: http://maryadamart.com/collings.htm 16. A quote from artist’s manuscript. LISA.

FURTHER READING There are many books and websites on Marcel Duchamp and DADA which the reader may wish to consider and even Wikipedia - which is as source of knowledge that would have bemused Marcel Duchamp - is a quick source for most topics mentioned here such as looking at Cartesian theory, installation art through to vanitas. The reader may also wish to consider googling websites dealing with modern cultural theory and popular culture. A book I briefly perused that maybe of interest to the reader is Art & Discontent Theory at the Millenium by Thomas McEvilley. DOCUMENTEXT. McPherson and Company. 1991.

However an excellent easily comprehensible introduction to Marcel Duchamp is the following website: Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp at: http://www.understandingduchamp.com/ Also here are a handful of books that maybe considered as a starting point to looking at Marcel Duchamp and DADA as well as considering modernism etcetera.

(I do not repeat the books mentioned in the Notes but they are also very much worth a look; and just for something a bit left-of-centre Joseph Heller’s novel Picture This is also worth a look which deals with Rembrandt’s time and the Ancient Greeks; it is an excellent read. Furthermore, onpedia on the web has an adequate article Marcel Duchamp and it is also worth having a look at the Philadelphia’s Museum of Art website which houses Marcel Duchamp’s The Large Glass.

Bailly, Jean-Christophe. DUCHAMP. Fernand Hazan Paris. 1984.

Bigsby. C.W.E. Dada and Surrealism. The Critical Idiom. General Editor: John D. Jump. Methuen & Co Ltd. 1972.

Blythe S.A & Powers, E.D. Looking at DADA. Museum of Modern Art. 2006.

Chipp, Herschel B. Theories of Modern Art. A Source Book by Artists and Critics With Contributions by Peter Selz and Joshua C.Taylor. University of California Press. 1968. de Duve, Thierry. KANT AFTER DUCHAMP. MIT PRESS. Dickerman, Leah with essays by Brigid Doherty; Dorothea Dietrich; Sabine T. Kriebel; Michael R. Taylor; Janine Mileaf. Matthew S. Witkovsky. DADA Zurich. Berlin. Hannover. Cologne. New York. Paris. National Gallery of Art. Washington. 2006.

Gablik Suzi. Has Modernism Failed? Thames and Hudson. 1984.

Lemone, Serge DADA. Art Dada. 1987.

Mink, Janis. DUCHAMP. Taschen. www.taschen.com MARCEL DUCHAMP. The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and Philadelphia Museum of Art. Edited by Anne D’Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine. 1975.

Artifacts dada exhibition catalogue. The University of Iowa Museum of Art. Iowa City Iowa. March 31-May 7. 1978.

Rethinking Popular Culture Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies. Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, editors. University of California Press. July 1991.

The Story of Painting 1. Michael Cavendish Ltd Learning System. Cultural Heritage. 1970.

Segy, Ladislas. African Sculpture Dover Publications. NY. 1958. The comment is made about African art confirming Cubist multi=perspective experimentation.

*A last minute addition: Rasula Jed. DESTRUCTION WAS MY BEATRICE. Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century. Basic Books.

New York. 2015. It makes some very interesting remarks about Kurt Schwitter’s MERZ as a reaction against cultural habit which well explains what I have instinctively sensed and the following at least is worth repeating:

…Schwitters was expanding on what the Dadaists had done, producing art that didn’t ‘work’ within the conventional paradigm or system. That system imposed on painting or poetry a preordained message or emotional stimulus, to which readymade responses clung like flies to flypaper: “How beautiful”, “Clever stuff” & so forth. Someone viewing a Grosz drawing that expressed the politically aggressive side of Berlin Dada might respond in predictable ways as well: “That’s terrible” or “Something has to be done!” Dada aggression was recognizable, if not as art then as political agitation. But by regarding himself as an artist, Schwitters operated in a domain of sensory experiment, beyond both conventional artists & the Dadaists. That’s what had drawn Raoul Hausmann to him, for he too was preoccupied with the notion that human awareness is generally confined to a narrow repertoire of routine perceptions, and the arts in general were guilty of reinforcing cultural platitudes.

An essay published by Russian theorist Viktor Shklovsky introduced the influential concept of estrangement (ostonenie). The convenience of familiarity has a cost, he argued.Perceptions become habituated.The purpose of art, Shlovsky proposes, is to slow down or impede perception & reawaken the senses to their full perceptual potential. The language of poetry should be “a difficult , roughened, impeded language.”A painting, by the same token, ought not to offer the sop of a digestible image but, instead, arouse & agitate the visual faculty.Better to squint & wonder than recognize & make a mental checkmark on a bucket list:been there, done that.

Schwitters made much the same point when he said that conventional art imitated the world, while Merz gives you chunks of the world itself. When Schwitters said he aspired to create the total Merz-world he was hoisting a Dada pennant, convening a nation of one, a nation in which everyone was welcome. He welcomed the world – with all its raggedy refuse & all its rough edges. [pages 106107, in the MERZ chapter].

Black Fez Poetry Nights In the spirit of the Cabaret Voltaire was the Black Fez Poetry Nights in Sydney during the 90s which were anarchic in organization allowing for the spontaneity of the human spirit. http://nicholasnicolaetchings.synthasite.com/black-fez.php

Curiosity CafĂŠ. Balmain.

Found musicians at Glebe where the minds behind the Black Fez would go for pizza.

The main founders of the Black Fez Poetry Nights Doug as well as Fenwick performing at various cafes. Original Black Fez Poetry Night invitation by the artist.

DADA LENIN

Dada Lenin B&W. 6” X 4” aquatint. zinc plate.

Comrade Plato B&W. 6” X 4” aquatint. zinc plate.

Apparently Lenin lived in the same street as the Cabaret Voltaire so there may have been a good chance that he went to it while in exile. I have mockingly dressed up Lenin in the same absurdist ‘magic bishop’ outfit worn by Hugo Ball as seen in the book cover. This etching was done after reading A People’s Tragedy. The Russian Revolution 1891-1924. Written by Orlano Figes. While after reading Plato’s Republic I have done this etching which has a bust of Plato on a Social Realist statue to formulate a ‘Great Leader.’ Although many of Plato’s philosophical ideas are to be appreciated what one may wish to question is his political notion of social engineering which bo9rders on modern day fascism. I have also intimated to Plato’s Republic in an earlier etching Neo-Platonic Form which references the Stolen Generation.

Dada’s negative critique of the West questioned its apparent illusionary notions of culture and morality in a time of war which a century later - having to face renewed existential threats - ‘western values’ still seem viable to be critiqued.

NAURU WHAT WAS TAKEN AND WHAT WAS GIVEN by Kelvin Skewes. This found object is a magazine photo essay which looks at Nauru’s colonial history as a phosphate mine and as offshore detention gulag.

kelvinskewes.com is a web address with full photo essay and next to photo of front cover of the magazine are barcode links to relevant articles and other items about Nauru provided by the magazine. It should be possible to scan the links with appropriate smartphone app to access links.

In contemporary terms one also wonders about the economic rise of Moloch with the ideological emergence of neoliberalism.

An Epitaph to Some Old Men Out from the rain Come the reflections of a happy moment Masterpieces of some past distant age Now all useless For the delusions of old men Came the moral judgements and their friends But none could they release them So the party went on without them And in the gutter did they lie Death was upon them As indifference went by There was no more living left All going to die in a nightmare scene The world ignoring all their pleas Does this make sense?

And in remembrance to these old men Was this awful alcoholic stench A homeless man’s response to the new society. Central Railway Station. Sydney.

the end of the world the world was gone and everyone laughed they killed their mothers while death was dying in the dark scream... so much for the answer it was never set free and parading down the backyard of their brains was the godot of their dreams no sense was there in thee? irrational man smiles blindly in the sand engulfs him and parading down the backyards of their brains was the godot of their dreams the result was life in another existence and someone asked again: was this the ‘creation’ of their impersonality? the sun rose and nothing left for breakfast

A Surrealist Poem Down from the sky come the four legged arms To land in a field of yellow machine guns. Hour by hour come the four legged arms…

To praise and worship the cerebrum of a Broken Doll Which stands silhouetted upon a prole Only to be hidden by the epochal second of an echoing atom bomb.

And so the four legged arms come and go Still praising the cerebrum of a Broken Doll…

But up above the planet Venus The moon still hides the sun Chained by a reference to the plectrumical drum And so the four legged arms come and go Still praising the cerebrum of a Broken Doll Come…

For in the seventh second of a disgusting pun Emerges a hand without no existence To simply become a pestilence…

And so the four legged arms come and go Still praising the cerebrum of a Broken Doll From which are cast a thousand knives From which are cast into the rock like surface Of some unclarifable, unusable thing…

Alas the embodiment Alas… …the four legged arms which come and go WHIZ! BANG! POP! goes the cerebrum of a Broken Doll Oh… Alas…the four legged arms and a broken doll A baby crying from her soul What of machine guns?

What of the BOMB? AND WHAT OF ECLIPSES UNFINISHED BY GOD? And so…a baby crying from her soul Unfinished? POEM And so the four legged arms still come and go Still praising the cerebrum of a Broken Doll.